save that for the black and white
by dawsons
Summary: "Can't we do it all over again?" he asks her one afternoon. "Bring the past back, and make it right?" Future!Fic, oneshot.


a/n: Hastily written to get the angst that's been riding in my system for a long time. Title and lyrics are from "Some Nights" by Fun.

* * *

He's having trouble keeping it together. So much trouble.

He knows it. Everyone else (though he's not sure how he knows) can see it. Everyone else, her excluded. He thinks she never notices. And maybe she'll never notice.

Sometimes it's great for work. He works away at the computer and keying in some more information for files and sometimes the irony of his situation makes dealing with stacks of paperwork so easy (and it had never been that way in the past – he's always sucked at computers).

Sometimes it isn't. Typing and typing and typing until he can't really think, yes, he can do that, but Finn knows he can't afford to lose himself in field work out in New York (the one thing in which he can't pull off the old let-instincts-control trick to make everything better, easier for him). He'd had a few close calls and he doesn't like to think that he's slowly losing it – but that's exactly what's happening to him.

Some days are worse than others. The times they'd shared to work together before hadn't been so bad, because the times were theirs to enjoy together only, as friends, ex-lovers, maybe even as something more and no one else could've taken that away from them.

Actually, they'd been too busy to think about each other to, trying to get her protection from all the stalkers that come with fame onstage, but still. Now he thinks every day about her. He thinks about the fact (the word sounds bitter in his mind) that she's not his anymore. That she belongs to someone else now. He wishes that his attention belonged to her, the way it always had been.

Puck keeps on telling him that he needs to get over himself and move on with that new girl he's seeing or someone else (if the thing with her doesn't work out well). His answer is always the same: "How would you want me to actually do that?"

He always lowers his voice and talks about how pool business is a hit with the ladies in California, about how Quinn's a hit there and how they're living the good life they've always wanted. In another situation he would've felt happy – but right now it's making him angry that his friends have what he can't have, so he finds a way to hang up and get back to business in a worse mood than before.

When Puck insists that they have to talk, never mind your higher-ups about it, he says, that's the point when he blocks him out over the receiver and scans her desk and the room if she's not at her place in the bullpen, to watch her when she's not paying much attention. He knows it's creepy, and more than the kind of thing stalkers would do, and he would've been on the receiving end of her lectures if she'd known, but he needs something to keep him going in the loneliness he feels.

Sometimes, he thinks she _does_ know. When she's throwing him looks at angles that are far from innocent from his point of view, when she flicks her tongue out and wets her lips so slowly it's driving him over the edge, when she stands so close to him, their faces just inches apart, batting her eyelashes, silently beckoning him to try and have his way with her when he knows – when they both know – he can't. When she becomes the Rachel he'd known ten years ago. Sometimes he thinks that she just likes to tease him, hard, the way she's done for the past ten years. Sometimes he thinks that she's waiting for him to make a move. Sometimes he does try – but when it seems that the opportunity's there, their timing's always off. She always pulls away. It also looks like she doesn't want to.

Finn knows he could have any girl he'd ever wanted. He's not blind to the fact that he's attractive. He knows that wherever he goes, some woman is going to hit on him, and sometimes he hits right back. The Hudson charm can easily catch up with you, he remembers his mother telling him, when she'd gone about the first time she'd met his father, and that's true. He knows there'll always be a restaurant, a store room, a park, a bathroom not too far away when it happens, although it won't always mean it's successful.

Right now he has a girlfriend. But he doesn't want her, or _any _girl. He wants _the_ girl. He wants her. The one he could've had. The one he can't have. The one he might as well never have again.

Sometimes he's glad that they'll be doing this for two more weeks before she can stop and finally get what she's asking from the police department. It'd mean that he wouldn't have to see her face and remember everything else. He wouldn't have to mope at work like this anymore and get back to business for real without an ex-fiancée hovering nearby and chucking mountains of memories and emotions back at him.

Sometimes he's not. While he's forced to remember everything when he does see her, he actually enjoys that. Remembering. He likes to relive all those times they've spent together in high school, times when they were so sure they'd be together for the rest of their lives. Happiness from the past is cold comfort, but it's better than having nothing, right? (He believes it is.)

She's smiling and he knows he looks like he wants to smile. He does want to smile. He wants to smile because she's smiling, but somehow he wants to cry as well. She's also looking at him but he knows she's not really seeing him. She's seeing that _other_ guy. The one she immediately had moved on to after him. The one he can't stand. The one she calls after a long day at the office working out permits and protection. The one who gets to hold her tight, fall asleep with at night and wake up with her in the morning. The one she does everything with now, instead of him. That's who she's seeing. That's who she's smiling about.

"Can't we do it all over again?" he asks her one afternoon. They're all alone in the office.

She only looks up at him from her paperwork and makes a questioning look.

"Bring the past back, and make it right?" He attempts a smile. "You and I. Can we do that?"

She gives him this tight-lipped expression, putting down the folders. "I wish we could, Finn. I wish we really could." She pauses. "I'd want that to happen, if we could."

"I hear a 'but' in there," he says, his grin faltering.

Pity flashes in her eyes. "You're right. But it hurts too much to go back now."

_We'll make the pain go away together and start anew_, he thinks. His heart is screaming. _Just let me love you again._ But he doesn't say it because she just gestures to that picture of her and _him_ standing together in New Times Square, and that's enough to make him recoil and stay away, because he remembers not too long ago they'd been posing in the exact same position.

All in all, it just kills him that this stranger is slowly taking over her memories, her feelings, her everything.

He's being replaced, and he's stuck loving a bright star that won't be shining for him anymore.

Honestly, he wants her to see him. He wants her to smile because of him again. He wants to hear from her that it's just another fling because she actually misses him. He knows better to think it'll actually happen again (because that has happened before). He knows she only sees him now as a good friend, and God forbid – even as a protective _brother_. He remembers Kurt saying this to him the first time she enlisted NYPD for help, and damn it, he just wants to put his face in his hands when the thought crosses his mind and wonder where they went wrong.

What was the point of all their sacrifices to have each other, he asks himself silently. They've done a lot and sacrificed so much to be together, but for some horribly twisted reason they're not together but forced to work in the same room because they have to. He wonders how it's exactly worth it, because it seems to him that it isn't. He wants to tell her, to remind her about everything, he wants to ask her if it meant anything at all. But he can't. She's already made that clear. He's starting to think that he's losing his mind like that. He's angry that he has to watch her smile this way from his desk.

A voice from above calls out it's a day. Everyone else's expressions change to relief. His doesn't. Someone notices. His hand is on his shoulder. He just shrugs it off. He watches her. She calls _him_. She's laughing. She's happy, and judging from the way the conversation goes, they're planning together another date. She says something along the lines of "I love you" (he doesn't want to believe that she'd said that; but he knows it won't change the fact that she had). She doesn't notice he's staring. Everyone else does. They all leave him alone. They know it's normal. They always see him staring at something or someone.

Right now, she doesn't.

With a sigh, he packs up his things and when he's done, he heads off to the elevator where he sees his girlfriend waiting for him. He has no idea how she's convinced security to let her come up, and sometimes it pisses him off, but right now, it's comfort. A cold one compared to what he actually wants.

Finn pretends to actually be in the conversation she starts when he steps in (it's about him needing to change his cologne, but he doesn't really care much, because when she talks about what he needs to change about him he tries his best to zone out). But he can't stop looking at _her_.

Because for one, for one flickering moment, he imagines seeing _her_ looking back at him just as he turns around to stand near the buttons, and holy hell, she really is staring at him, and he thinks it must be because this is the first she's ever seen him with someone else.

He's not sure, but it somehow seems that she's holding him in place with that kind of eyes that seem to be speaking a thousand things.

He sighs.

Is there sadness?

_I know_, they seem to say. _I do know._

Does she? Maybe he's just imagining.

_Bring the past back_.

Where does he begin to do that, though?

_Let's make it right._

How?

_We'll both make the pain go away together. Start anew. Love me again._

The elevator doors close.

* * *

_The other night, you wouldn't believe the dream I just had about you and me._

_I called you up, but we'd both agree,_

_It's for the best you didn't listen._

_It's for the best we get our distance._

_It's for the best you didn't listen,_

_It's for the best we get our distance._

* * *

a/n: I… I really have no excuse for this. I honestly don't know what I've done. I swear, I hope canon won't become this. But please, leave a review, a comment, feedback, suggestions, anything. Tell me what you think. Reviews = happiness.


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